Remember that Clinical Trial of Alternative Treatments in Brazil?


About two months ago, I blogged about COVIDiots taking ivermectin horse paste for their COVID-19. In that post I noted that there was a clinical trial underway in Brazil to test its effectiveness.

The study, called the Together Trial was an international effort to test ivermectin, along with hydroxychloroquine and an antidepressant called fluvoxamine. The implication at the time was that they were seeing good preliminary results for the latter, but not the former two.

This week a study published in the medical journal The Lancet concluded that fluvoxamine is indeed effective at preventing hospitalizations. It was a randomized trial with a placebo as the control conducted among people who tested positive for the virus. 

Results showed that 11% of the people who got the drug were hospitalized, versus 16% of the people who got the placebo. That's a 5% reduction in absolute risk, and a relative reduction of 32%. Nothing to sneeze at.

Fluvoxamine is a cheap drug that is widely available in generic form. It is typically used to treat Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Researchers think it may work by reducing inflammatory molecules called cytokines and by reducing platelets that are implicated in blood clotting.

Now here's the interesting thing: No studies have come out of this clinical trial about ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. That's probably because they showed no benefits, and there is a bias in academia against publishing such results. 

Here's another interesting thing: The COVIDiot Vanguard has not embraced fluvoxamine, even though there is now proof that it works. It continues to embrace ivermectin, and there is no proof that it works. 

People are still saying it saved their lives, even though you can't say something saved your life just because you took it and lived. Last week the Montana Attorney General sent a state trooper to a hospital in an attempt to force doctors to treat a patient with the drug.

All this just shows that you can't fix stupid. And there's a whole lot of stupid going around when it comes to anti-vaxxers and ivermectin.

Image by Steven Iodice from Pixabay 

Popular posts from this blog

Looks Like Immune Responses are Enduring After All

Image
 For some time, public health officials have fretted about whether immunity to COVID-19, acquired via infection or vaccination would stick.  Studies showed rapid declines in antibodies during recovery from infection and thereafter . It turns out that this concern was overblown. A study just released says bone marrow plasma cells are a persistent source of protective antibodies, and that "circulating resting memory B cells directed against the S protein were detected in the convalescent individuals."   Another study , yet to be reviewed, suggests that vaccines boost this effect. In fact, some are suggesting this situation this could actually mean  lifetime immunity .   Whether the same thing happens with vaccination is not clear. Most estimates suggest that vaccine immunity will last about a year . More pessimistic estimates putting the protection period at six months .  The possible shorter time frame, plus the appearance of the new variants, have the vaccine makers working
Read more

Another One Bites the Dust

Image
Hi all. Stepping out of retirement for a moment to say that the day has finally arrived. After four years of successfully avoiding COVID-19 infection I had a positive test yesterday. Symptoms are very mild—I've had worse colds. The provider at urgent care said almost all the cases they are seeing are the same. Mild symptoms may also be due to the fact that I had the original vaccine then the two boosters. All this time I thought I might be a NOVID —one of those people who never get the bug. But no, it must have been my assiduous mask wearing and avoidance of high-risk situations when things were bad. So here's double middle fingers to all the kooks who think masks don't work (I've not been wearing masks for months now). I don't know what variant I have but it's likely JN.1. It is said to be extraordinarily contagious and accounts for 60% of cases worldwide . It also tends to produce mild infections like the one I have.  This article claims that right now every
Read more

AZ Pandemic Numbers Summary for the Seven Days Ending November 9: Everything is Going South

Image
Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Well this isn't good. The lull seems to be over. Virtually every number is up, both over a week and over four weeks. The most worrisome is hospital beds, which have been steadily trending up over the last several weeks.  Wastewater signals are all up except Tempe (dashboard is up again) which after going up last week (from 41 to 100) decreased by about 10%. The increases are worrisome because the latest data from ASU's Lim Lab (last updated October 31), where they sequence PCR samples to identify variants, shows that only about 46% of sequences showed BA.5. That is one of the Omicron variants the new bivalent vaccine was designed to protect against.  All the rest of the samples are BA.2.75 (7.7%), which I flagged several weeks ago, and BQ,1.1 (15.4%), and BQ.1 (30.8%), both of which I blogged about a couple weeks ago.  Those, new research confirms , are much more lik
Read more